Indonesia: Losing candidate to reject election results

Prabowo Subianto accuses fraud, mismanagement in April vote held to choose new president of archipelago nation

By Nicky Aulia Widadio

JAKARTA, Indonesia (AA) - Indonesian presidential candidate Prabowo Subianto said late on Monday he will reject the results of elections held last month if the grievances of his party are not addressed.

He urged the election commission to correct the irregularities and errors in data entry before announcing results on May 22.

Based on early results, incumbent President Joko Widodo and his running mate Ma'ruf Amin are leading by 13 million votes with 70% of the votes counted.

Quoting figures by his own party members, Subianto said he was leading with 58% of the votes.

"This time I will not accept a fraudulent outcome," Subianto told foreign reporters in Jakarta.

Subianto, a former military commander, had also rejected the 2014 election results.

As a middle ground, Subianto requested third parties and experts to audit the official vote count conducted by the election commission.

“We’re very pessimistic, but we’re giving the charge to our people … If they [General Election Commission] are serious, we have a lot of experts, we can get international experts,” he said.

“Whatever people do, it’s the decision of the people. I don’t dictate them to do this and that … I will not call people to the street, but I am convinced they will be on the street,” he added.

More than 192 million Indonesians went to the polls on April 17 to vote in the nation’s first simultaneous presidential and legislative elections.

Both presidential candidates first ran against each other in the 2014 election, when Subianto lost by six percentage points to Widodo.